While starring as Juanita on “Desperate Housewives” at just six years old, she was a victim to vicious cyberbullying comments about her appearance, which caused her to develop anxiety, an eating disorder and a marijuana use disorder.
She and Elizabeth discuss the role Madison’s family plays in her life and the advice her sister Demi Lovato gave her about recovering in the public eye.
Madi, welcome to Heart of the Matter. It’s great to have you.
Thank you so much. I’m glad to be here. I’m excited.
I know. We’re excited to have you. And I’m really excited because you’re, my gosh, you’ve taken to social media to announce that you’re working on, you’re almost a year sober. Tell me about it?
Yeah, it literally feels like yesterday that I first decided, I first made the decision to stop using drugs, and it’s been quite an adventure. I can easily say that it’s probably the best decision that I’ve ever made, and I can’t say that I’ve regretted it, even for a second. It’s been extremely difficult, of course. I mean, it’s one of the hardest things that you can do, especially at my age. And living where I live and being in the industry that I’m in, it’s kind of something that you’re always going to be surrounded by. But I have enjoyed every second of it. While it’s been hard, I’ve enjoyed every second of this journey and getting to show people that it’s possible. The people in my life that have come to me and said that it helped them make the decision to make a change in their life and made them want to get help because they saw how free I was.
That’s interesting. People can already see a difference in you?
Yeah, exactly.
Wow.
A lot of people, they see that I’m happier. A lot of people have been telling me that I’m glowing now in a way that I just never was before. And they see that and they want part of that freedom, which I think is so incredibly powerful to be able to live by example like that.
You’re 20 years old?
21.
21, oh my gosh.
Newly 21.
…fathom that you’re in recovery at 21, I guess. My hat is off to you, it really is. Because it is hard when all of your friends are probably out partying. Tell me, was it pot that was your problem or were you doing other-
Yes.
It was just pot?
Yeah. I mean, I had experienced a lot of different kinds of addiction and I tried a lot of different things, but I was using pot pretty heavily for years straight. I mean, I didn’t go a day without smoking for, I want to say five or six years.
Wow.
So, it was a huge, huge issue for me, and I never knew just how much of a problem it was, and I think that’s something that I want to talk about in situations like this and something that I want to stress so much is that people think that it’s not addictive. People think that it’s not as serious as other drugs, and for a lot of people, I’m sure that is the case and they can use it every once in a while. I just was not one of those people. It was my best friend. It was my crutch. It was my biggest obsession for a very long time, and I just always kept telling myself, “Oh, it could be worse. I could be using harder things. I could be drinking very heavily.” And I had a million excuses as to why this was an okay thing to be doing. But the second that I didn’t have it in my hand, I felt like my entire world was crashing down, and that ultimately is a problem.
We know from statistics here at the Partnership to End Addiction that marijuana is the most commonly used drug by teenagers and young adults. This is very, very common.
Yes.
It’s now legal in most states. I mean, you walk around New York City where I live and the smell of it is everywhere. I mean, it just seems to be everywhere, and a lot of people do have an attitude that, “Oh, it’s just like, it’s like having a beer, no big deal.” And it’s not, we know from the science that it does radically change your brain.
Yes.
Talk a little bit about that obsession, because I know that I was addicted to alcohol, and at the end of my addiction all I thought about was, “How am I going to drink? Where am I going to drink? When am I going to drink? What am I going to drink?” It was insane, the obsession that took you right out of your own life.
Exactly. It was all that I thought about. It was always, always in my hand. I mean, you could ask any of my friends, any of my family members. There was not a time where you would see me without a marijuana vape in my hand. And that’s another thing too is that it’s so easily accessible. You don’t even have to go outside to smoke anymore because you have these handheld vapes that for the most part don’t even really smell. So you can get away with doing it just with doing it just about anywhere, which ultimately proved to be extremely dangerous for me in my addiction.
And can you buy those legally, or is that something illegal? You’re in California?
In Los Angeles it is legal, yes.
So, there are stores that sell these things?
Yes. Yeah, there are places. If you have a medical marijuana card, you can get these things when you’re over 18. But even if you don’t have a medical marijuana card you can get these things once you’re over 21. And these stores are on every single corner. I mean, they’re everywhere. I’m sure I could walk down the street right now and go and get it if I wanted to, but I thankfully have no desire to do that anymore. And it really is astonishing how I went from not being able to sleep without it. I couldn’t eat without it. Eating was a huge issue, because I also have struggled with an eating disorder on and off throughout my life since I was a child. And it made that aspect of my life a hundred times worse, because I really could not get an appetite, unless I smoked first.
And if I wasn’t able to smoke, I lost all hope of eating. And I mean, I went days without eating because of that. It came to me very, very, very dangerous. And I know a lot of people who have experienced that as well, where it just completely takes away your appetite to the point where this is the only way, using that is the only way that you can control your hunger. And that became very dangerous for me. Luckily it only took, I want to say a week to two weeks of quitting for me to go back to normal and be able to eat without it. And I was shocked how quickly that shift happened. I thought, “I’m not going to be able to eat without wanting to throw up for a month, two months, three months.” And it really turned around in less than two weeks, which I thought was just incredible.
And that’s something that I want to stress as well for people who are going through the same thing is that it is possible to recover from this, and it happens a lot quicker than you might think. I was blown away with how quickly my body kind of got back to normal, and that’s not to say it wasn’t difficult. It was very difficult, but it was so worth it because now I can sleep without it. I can eat normally again, which is something that I wasn’t able to do for years. And more importantly, or more interestingly, the world seems brighter. Colors are more vivid.
That’s so weird.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s very weird.
When you say that you were smoking all day, every day, was it to soothe anxiety that you were smoking the pot? Or, I mean, tell me what it was, what it gave you? You mentioned, obviously you felt like you couldn’t sleep without it and you couldn’t eat without it. Is that because you were too wound up and too anxious, or?
I definitely, I’ve had an anxiety disorder most of my life, but it definitely made it worse. Because I felt like if I wasn’t in a state of having that buzz from smoking, the anxiety was going to be ten times worse. I think that’s something that happens with a lot of different substances. It could be alcohol, it could be marijuana, it could be whatever you’re using, different pills and medications and things.
Just about every prescription drug. It’s all about soothing yourself.
Exactly. And you start taking these things to soothe some kind of anxiety or discomfort, but then the anxiety and the discomfort eventually starts coming from the substance itself. So, you’re using a substance to calm anxiety that’s being caused by that substance in the first place, so it’s this horrible cycle. It’s this never-ending loop that ultimately you have to decide to break away from. And it’s difficult, but it ends up being a lot easier once the anxiety from smoking or whatever substance it is, once that’s gone, you kind of question why you ever started using it in the first place.
Did something happen in your life that made you think, “Okay, I got to stop. This is not working. This is hurting me.” What happened in your life that gave you the revelation that you needed to put this down? Because it’s not easy, as you just said, it was hard. It is hard.
Right. I think what made me realize that I needed to stop was when I started saying no to opportunities and turning down plans to go out and do things, or plans to travel and things like that. When I started turning those things down because I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to have it in my hand with me at all times, that’s when I realized, “Okay, this is taking something away from me. I’m not gaining anything from this. In fact, a lot of things are being taken away from me.”
And you’ve said you were isolated and cut off from everybody? Instead of being out and about and having fun with your friends and family, you were by yourself?
I was extremely isolated. I spent, I like to say it was weeks, but in reality it was more like months alone in my bedroom because I was ashamed of how much I was using. And I knew if I was around friends and family, either I would have to use less, or they would see how much I was using and would come and confront me with their concerns. And I didn’t want either of those things to happen, so I isolated myself and I stayed by myself in my room. And at first I was okay with that, which I think is actually quite sad that I was happy being alone.
But a couple months in I started to realize this is not a life. I’m not living. I’m merely surviving. And at the time I was only 20 years old and I thought, “This is not a way that a 20-year-old should be living. There’s something wrong here.” And ultimately my mom was the one who came to me and said, “I think something needs to change. I’m worried. I’m concerned. I think it’s time that we reach out and see if we can get you some help.” And I didn’t protest for even a second.
Really?
Yeah. I said, “You know what? I 100% agree. Let’s start making some phone calls.” And I was in a residential treatment center three days later.
Wow. I know that there are a lot of people in our audience, many people who listen to this podcast are people who are in recovery, people who also suffer from mental health issues, and people who have loved ones who have struggled with these issues. And that story you just told about your mom approaching you and saying, “I think we need to get you help.” How did she do it in such a way that you were able to hear her? Or is it just simply that you yourself were ready at that point? In other words, I think that’s the question I get asked the most from people who have read my book or know my story is, “My sister is going through this, my wife is going through this. How do I get her help? What do I say to her?” And I’m just curious, because it worked for you. Was it, how did your mom handle this and why did it work?
I think it was definitely a combination of me knowing that something needed to change. I was kind of just waiting for that moment where someone came to me and said, “Okay, it’s time.” I was too afraid to ask for the help. Because a part of me didn’t want to stop.
Sure.
I think I was just waiting for it to be brought to my attention. But also, my mom came to me in a very non-judgmental, very non-panicked way. She wasn’t in tears. She wasn’t shaking nervous, she wasn’t angry. She kind of just sat me down and stated the facts and said, “This is what I see, and I’m worried. And I think it’s time.” It did help as well that a lot of people in my family, my close family and extended family, they’ve all dealt with addiction, because as we know, it can often-
Run in the families.
It can also run in families. Exactly. I think that did help having seen this process so many times. But ultimately, I think it was that she came to me without making me feel like I was doing something wrong. And I wasn’t making her panic, and I didn’t make her cry. And I think if she had come to me in tears and very upset, I would have gotten very defensive. You would think that that would have wanted to make me go even more. But I think it would have actually done the opposite. I would have gotten very defensive and I would have felt so guilty that I wouldn’t have been able to admit what I had done. But because she came to me and just stated the facts and was very, “This is what’s happening. This is what needs to happen. I’m going to help. It’s not the end of the world. I’m not angry. It’s just time.”
Your sister, Demi Lovato is in recovery. Did you turn to her at all and ask her advice or help, or guidance or anything?
I think it did actually take me a minute to reach out to her. I think I didn’t reach out to her until I had already been in treatment for a couple days, because I didn’t want her to think that she now had this huge responsibility of being a new kind of role model for me. I didn’t want her to feel like she needed to take care of me in any sense, or I didn’t want her to think that I was now going to be relying on her for daily advice and daily support. And I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on her. She was the one who reached out to me actually and just said, “Hey, I’m proud of you and if you are having a hard day, you can always reach out to me.”
And there was a couple times where I reached out to her and said, “Hey, did you ever deal with these feelings? And also when you were in treatment, did they also do this? And when is the right time for me to ask if I could have visitors?” Or the small things like, “Did you ever have trouble getting along with the people that you were in treatment with, because someone’s really annoying me?”
Small things like that. Some just sister advice questions that revolved more around the lightheartedness and the humor that does … Because there is a lot of, you have to find a lot of humor in situations like that. If you don’t laugh, then you’ll just cry the whole time. And who wants that? No one wants to do that. Being in treatment can actually be quite funny sometimes. We all kind of learn, me and all the other people in there, we did learn to laugh at ourselves and it did keep things a lot more fun.
I think the hardest I’ve ever laughed in my life was when I was in treatment.
Yes, me too.
I don’t know what it is or I don’t know. Or around other people in recovery. I think that’s definitely, I remember being aware of that. I don’t know how many years it’s been since I laughed this hard. What’s the single best piece of advice Demi gave you about recovery?
I would say the best piece of advice that Demi gave me is to not put so much pressure on yourself. And this is specific to us in our situation because we are doing this so publicly. And we are so open and honest with the world about our experience and our recovery and our addiction and our entire journey is to not label yourself as this martyr of recovery. And to not feel all this pressure to be so perfect and always know what to say, always know exactly what to do. And we’re learning just as much as the people who we help and the people who we give advice to. And so I think it was really helpful to hear her say, “You don’t have to be this perfect role model that always knows exactly what to say and do. We are figuring it out one day at a time, and we will continue to be figuring this out one day at a time for probably for the rest of our lives.”
And that made me feel a lot less pressure, because I am not very far into recovery, I mean, I haven’t even hit a year yet. I think that was very relieving to hear, especially coming from her, because I do think she was kind of labeled the face of recovery for a very long time. And she showed me that that’s not all that we are. And it is possible to be this role model and be inspiring to others, but not let that take over our entire identity. Just because you’re in recovery doesn’t mean that that’s all you’re good for. And that doesn’t mean that your entire sense of self now has to revolve around being an addict. And I think that was very powerful.
It’s one of many things that you are, it’s not the only thing that you are.
Exactly.
I’m curious, why did you, you went on to TikTok to announce that you were sober, that you had stopped, that you put down marijuana, but you did that only a few months sober. Why did you decide to go public? Because listen, I mean, there’s enormous amount of stigma right now around both mental health and around substance use disorder. And that leads a lot of people to keep that part of themselves very secret and very hidden. It is still a very rare thing to publicly announce you’re sober and to publicly tell your story. Why did you decide to do it and why so soon when that first year can be wobbly and really difficult and lots of people relapse?
Yeah. Yeah, I decided that I wanted to go public with it so quickly. It was actually a conversation that I had with my therapist and actually multiple therapists that I was working with while I was in treatment. They suggested that I do this not only to help others, but because they knew it would help keep me accountable. And I completely agreed. I had a lot of people that I was in treatment with who didn’t want to tell certain family members, or didn’t want to tell certain friends. And they didn’t quite know why they didn’t want to tell them. And ultimately, I think it comes down to, if someone doesn’t know that you are sober or that you stopped using a certain substance, that opens up the opportunity for you to use that substance around them and not get called out on it.
It’s almost self-protective of your sobriety to tell people, “I’m sober,” to keep sort of another little … Interesting.
And I think that that keeps me accountable more than anything else. Because the more people that know that I have quit doing drugs, the more people I will be letting down if I decide to go back and relapse. And I understand that relapse is definitely a part of recovery. And it happens more often than not. What’s important is not that you relapse is that you get back-
Right. It’s not falling, it’s getting back on the horse.
Exactly. Exactly. And so I think knowing that I have, I talk about it on TikTok lot and knowing that I have 50,000 people that I’d be letting down if I did decide to start using again, that ultimately is what has kept me sober, for me personally. Because not to put pressure on myself, but sometimes you do need a little bit of pressure.
Except the person you’d really be letting down is yourself, you know that?
Of course.
…right.
Of course.
I’m curious, your sister, Demi hasn’t been so happy with some of her choices about speaking out publicly. She has talked about the fact that she regrets sharing so much of her story. That didn’t give you any pause. The fact that your own sister was like, “Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so honest.”
I think for me, I think one of the reasons that she regrets it, and this, I’m just assuming it’s because she is, her level of recognition is on such a larger scale that I could never even begin to be compared to. I have my little group of 50,000 followers that like to support what I do. And I have my little group of, I guess you could call them fans. I call them supporters because I feel like fans, I don’t really resonate with that word, but I don’t feel like the entire world is watching me in the same way that the entire world was watching Demi.
Yeah, they really were. I remember interviewing her on Good Morning America years ago right before. I think she had a real tough time and just, she was so wonderful and yet the pressure, I could even see it then. It was massive and enormous.
All right, I want to talk a little bit to you about, because this has been a huge issue in the news with social media and the effect it has on especially teenage girls. The CDC came with a big report talking about the fact that we’re seeing levels of depression and anxiety that are off the charts. And you were cast at the age of six years old onto the hit TV show, Desperate Housewives. You were on the show for four years, was that it?
Yes, four years.
Playing Eva Longoria’s daughter?
Mm-hmm.
And you told, I read that you said that you got shamed for your weight while you were on that show.
Yes.
And this incredible opportunity that happened to you in your life being a child actor on a huge show.
Yeah.
I can’t believe people would actually criticize a child for how she looks.
Yeah.
Tell me what that looked like? Did people write in, what did they say? How did that impact you?
Yeah, the reactions that I got to my character on Desperate House were, I mean, it was just shocking. I mean, a lot of people came at it in a way that they were “concerned for my health.” And I personally believe that that’s just not true, that it was a coverup for so that they could just judge a six-year-old. But I-
A six-year-old, I mean, go on, go on.
Yeah. And some of the comments that I used to read, I was never allowed to be on a computer unsupervised at that age. But kids are very intelligent, especially my generation. We know how to get onto a computer when no one’s looking, or when parents are asleep, or taking a nap, or cooking dinner or whatever. We can get into a computer if we want. And so I would spend hours and hours reading comments online and the comments section of YouTube videos and comments on TMZ. And I remember this website, OceanUp was a huge, huge thing. And I would just spend a crazy amount of time reading through these comments, and most all of them were just atrocious. I mean, they said things like they wanted me to die because-
Oh, my God.
… of what I looked like. I mean, it was just horrible. I mean, it was like, “Ugly fat cow. And I hope you get cancer and die because you’re so fat.” And just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible things. And this is when I was six, seven, eight years old. And I’d like to say that things are different now. I’d like to say that things have gotten a little bit better, but I worry sometimes that maybe things are just, they’re a little less anonymous now, which is why people aren’t risking saying those things as much anymore. And I don’t know if it’s because people are becoming more compassionate or because they don’t want to get caught or not. I’m not quite sure. But reading comments like that definitely affected my mental health and ultimately played into me developing an eating disorder at a very young age.
How old were you?
My first memories of trying to starve myself, I was seven years old. And a lot of it came from reading those comments. And my family had no idea that this was going on. My mom had no idea that I was seeing these things, that I was reading these things, because I was very, very sneaky about it. I don’t blame her at all. I mean, it was literally impossible to stop me from seeing those things. And I was also very good at hiding and throwing away meals than saying that I ate them. And a lot of this happened while I was at school, so there was no way for my parents to know that I was restricting.
And it changed in different ways. I would enter eating disorder recovery and be fine for a couple years, and then it would come back. I would starve myself and then would go into months of struggling with a binge-eating disorder. So, it’s definitely morphed and changed and gone back and forth. Right now, I would like to say I’m about two years into recovery and things are going really, really well, which is great to be able to say that, but I don’t think it’s something that will ever be completely gone or it will ever completely be fixed. And that I think is the same as having an addiction. It never completely goes away. It’s something that you have to continue to work on for the rest of your life. It does get easier, of course, but it will always be there.
Did you tell any of your co-stars on Desperate Housewives or the showrunner? Anybody? Did anybody on the show? I mean, surely they must have seen some of these comments. Someone on the show must have known?
Yeah, I think if they did, they never came out and said anything to me, other than going out of their way to tell me that I was beautiful and tell me that I looked really pretty that day, or that outfit looked really cute on me and things like that. And the wardrobe on the show, the wardrobe department was very aware of making me feel comfortable. I was able to speak up and say, “Hey, I really don’t like the way I feel in these clothes. I feel very uncomfortable.” And at one point they let me bring in my own jeans because I kept telling them the way that these jeans are, this fabric, this texture, it’s really bothering me. I can’t focus on my lines and they would let me bring in my own clothes to wear so I would feel more comfortable. And so I think that they may have had some idea of what was going on because they definitely made it a priority for me to feel comfortable in my own skin, which I really appreciated.
I know you were especially close to Eva Longoria. Did you ever tell her about these comments? Did she ever know?
We never spoke about it. I think she knew from the content of the show. I mean, there was one episode where I went to school with a bunch of makeup on because girls in my class said that I wasn’t pretty enough to be her daughter. I mean, this was talked about literally in the script of the show, the whole joke of my character was that Eva was this thin, beautiful model and her daughter turned out to be quite the opposite. And so I think she was very aware that this was going to affect me. We never explicitly talked about it, but she definitely went out of her way to make me feel like I was pretty and like I was special. And she made me feel like I was family. And if I ever did want to go to her with these things, I absolutely could have.
I felt so ashamed that these comments were even being written, I didn’t even want to talk about. On the off chance they hadn’t seen the comments, I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. But it’s different now. I have learned to talk about it because I think it’s incredibly important for people to know how bad cyber bullying can be and just how the unthinkable is actually happening today. And I think it’s really important that people are aware of that so they can look out for it and protect this next generation of children.
Let’s be honest, it’s still obviously just as bad as it was when you were six years old and being cyber bullied and people were saying the vilest, most awful things.
Yes.
And I am so sorry that as a child you read those things and that there are people out there-
Thank you.
… God help them, who would write those things. But if you look at the CDC’s statistics on teenage girls and young women, it’s still going on. It’s something we have to address.
Yes.
Finally, I just wanted to close out today with having … You have said that in your family unit, mental health, like you as a family unit, your mom, your siblings, extended family, that you make mental health a priority, that you check in on each other?
Yes.
What does that look like for your family? Because I think it’s great advice for everybody. Because I think what happens is just like you did when you were six, just like you did when you were struggling and smoking too much pot every day, just like I did when I was drinking every day, people suffer silently. They suffer quietly. They suffer alone.
Yes.
And what does your family do to make sure that mental health is a priority and that connection is happening?
My family is very, very good about checking in. I mean, we each talk to each other almost every day. I know my mom talks to all three of her daughters every single day. She checks in with me in the morning. She checks in with me if she hasn’t heard from me. She checks in with me in the middle of the day, and we always say goodnight before we fall asleep if we’re not together in-person. She does the same with Dallas. She does the same with Demi. If she hasn’t seen Dallas or heard from her, she’ll go ahead and give her a call. She does the same with Demi. And on top of that we get together. We try to get together every other week, every week if possible. Even if it’s just her going over and spending time with Demi at Demi’s place and watching a movie together.
It could be, it’s actually so much easier than one would think. And my mom has proved that to me. I mean, she is very good at checking in with all of us. The second that Demi pops into my head, I’ll go and shoot her a text and just say, “Hey, how you doing? Was thinking about you, miss you, love you.” And I do the same exact thing with Dallas. Anytime we see a TikTok or an Instagram post that we think that the rest of the family would find funny, we go ahead and send it on the group chat. And if someone hasn’t responded in the group chat for a day, we will go out of our way to make sure we go and check on them. So, we’re very, very close in that sense because we know that individually we all have the different things that we struggle with. And these things do still creep up on us from time to time, so it’s important to constantly keep an eye out for that. And I try to do that with my friends as well. I think that’s also very important.
Well, Madi, it was such a pleasure talking to you. Good luck completing your first year. I can’t wait to-
Thank you.
… mark it. So it’ll be in July to everybody, and thank you so much for sharing about the cyber bullying that you endured. I’m just so glad that you’ve come through it all, and I really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. This has been great. Thank you.